The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin: Second Edition [Paperback]

The authoritative edition of Franklin's autobiography, now with a new foreword by the eminent Franklin scholar Edmund S. Morgan

A classic of eighteenth-century American history and literature, Benjamin Franklin'sAutobiographyhas had an influence perhaps unequaled by any other book by an American writer. Written ostensibly as a letter to his son William, Franklin'sAutobiographyoffers his reflections on philosophy and religion, politics, war, education, material success, and the status of women.

Prepared by the editors ofThe Papers of Benjamin Franklin, this edition is drawn with scrupulous care from the original manuscript in Franklin's handwriting now in the Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery. The introduction by Leonard W. Labaree places the autobiography in literary and historical contexts. In a new foreword, Edmund S. Morgan writes about Franklin's dual allegiance as an American and a subject of an English king—and his emergence as a leader of the American Revolution. This edition also includes biographical notes, a chronology of Franklin's life, and an updated bibliography.

The authoritative edition of Franklin's autobiography, now with a new foreword by the eminent Franklin scholar Edmund S. Morgan

"People who have read one or more of the many current books about Benjamin Franklin really ought to direct their attention to the man himself, specifically toThe Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. . . . It is the first great American book. . . . An extraordinary document. . . . Plainly yet vividly written, its 18th-century prose still accessible to ordinary readers more than two centuries later. . . . It portrays Colonial and Revolutionary America . . . with an immediacy unmatched in almost any other document. . . . Franklin's wisdom is for the ages, our own as much as his. So read the 'Autobiography,' and—amongl1